Thank you for the reviews.

I know we haven't spent my time with James and Amelia (unlike my other stories where we see Eddie and Rachel's children grow up) but they do all grow up so fast... don't they?

They Are Only Going To Be Eighteen Once

"Do you think Mum will hate us for not wanting to spend our birthday with her?" Amelia asked.

"I am sure she won't see it like that."

"How James?"

"Because we are going to say that it is a night that they can have alone."

Amelia was slightly struggling to see the method in James' madness. "Sorry?"

"Look Mum and Dad need to talk. Dad needs to, somehow, convince her that he is there to stay. They need a night to themselves where they can talk frankly to each other. We already agreed to have the party at Mum's and put Melissa into a nice hotel for the night. So if we word it as a night alone."

"I suppose so."

"Amelia, we need to do everything in our power to stop Mum pushing Dad away. The more opportunities we give them to talk by themselves, the sooner Mum will let him in."

"Do you think she is determined to push him out then?"

"I think she is on the fence. I think that giving her the right pushes will stop her from doing something that she doesn't actually want to do."

"James, I am glad you are all for this, but you know we can do as you suggest and she could see it as more of a reason to push him away."

James leant over as he picked up one of his journals. Amelia knew that her brow creased when she noticed that there were quite a few pages missing from the journal. James never ripped pages out. What had made him rip out those pages?

"Look, here is the plan." He said as he handed her the journal. "We've got her here and she has seen how we now work. Dad said that they had agreed on her going back to work after Christmas and that they would be holding a few management meetings at home. That is work and I think Mum knows that Dad will always be by her side as her deputy."

"But not as something more?"

"She never found dating easy. And I don't think she would have done, with or without us. She only trusts us because we have had no option but to be by her side. The three of us need to prove that when Mum looks to her side, she is going to have us and Dad."

"What happened here?" Amelia said, gesturing towards the missing pages.

"You were right. I had to let it go at some point. Amelia… I know I've been an awful person in trying to keep you and Mum safe. Not everyone is going to be Robert. I don't have to keep you safe from the world." He let out a small laugh. "With you, I have to keep you safe from your own mind. But Dad is there now. Someone… to share the load with."

"Then I am glad I've finally got my brother and constant companion back."

"I'm glad to be back."

Individually, they were still dealing with stuff. But Amelia knew that she could see the difference in James and it seemed like more had happened than just him letting their dad in. Robert was always going to be something difficult for James to accept and let go and Amelia was proud that he felt like he could finally let that all go.

This definitely felt like a new start for them all.

"I'm sorry. What?" Rachel said.

"Mum, we are going to have a Halloween party at yours for our birthday," James said.

Rachel probably should have guessed that, as the house seemed to be filling up with alcohol, James and Amelia were going to try and celebrate their 18th birthday like any normal 18-year-old. It was clear that Eddie had agreed with their plans (hence them going ahead with them) but Rachel had a million concerns about it. Mainly the one that there were more students from Waterloo Road that she wouldn't want anywhere near her house than any other school that she had worked at. There was no telling what state her house was going to be left in.

"No." Rachel said.

"Rachel, they are only going to be 18 once," Eddie said.

"I don't care. Who have you invited?" She took in their faces. "Don't tell me you've made it an open invitation."

"It kinda got out of hand," Amelia said.

"How?!"

"Mum, it's fine," James said.

"It's not. Not when every Tom, Dick and Harry has been invited to my house."

"Most of them are from Waterloo Road. I'll be keeping an eye on things. And we know. No smoking indoors and nobody going upstairs. We've got a gazebo to set up outside and we've tried to plan for everything that could go wrong."

"I am not happy with this." Rachel paused. "And I thought Melissa and Philip were living at mine."

"We've booked Auntie Melissa into a spa hotel and we are going to say that she can do what she wants and we will pay for it. To sweeten the deal." Amelia said.

"I wouldn't tell Melissa she can do what she wants."

"Something along those lines," James said. "If anything, it might be nice for you two to have a night alone."

Part of Rachel wished that they would just come out with it and just tell her what they wanted to say instead of this constant tiptoeing around. But Rachel did know what James meant and she knew that she needed to tell Eddie where they stood and that she needed him to give her a list of reasons why pushing him away is the worst thing in the world. She needed to let him in again before she pushed him away for good.

"You better have this all planned out." Rachel said.

"We've got this Mum," James said.

Amelia knew that the Halloween party meant that most people weren't actually going to take a lot of effort in their costumes. And by the looks of most people, they had either recycled something that they had worn last year or just got anything that they could get from the local shops.

Amelia wouldn't say that she had made more of an effort but at least she wasn't one of the many girls dressed as a cat. Although she was sure that she was probably putting off quite a few people by being dressed as the girl from The Ring.

"Is Mason happy with this?" Janeece asked.

"Mum didn't really get a choice once we did mention it to her," Amelia said. "She was kinda told that we had it all sorted."

Amelia knew why they invited Philip but she could tell that her cousin was well out of his depth with all this. Her weird, awkward cousin showing how weird and awkward he could be as he made his way over to her.

"Do you know all these people?" Philip asked when he reached her.

"Philip, calm down. We might not but Jamie isn't going to let anything happen, is he? And he isn't drinking, is he?" Amelia said.

"He bloody should be. It is his 18th." Maxine said.

"And Mum has only just come out of hospital. His head isn't in the right place for drinking and neither is mine."

"You do realise that you aren't meant to remember your 18th. I can't remember mine." Janeece said.

"Look, don't get me wrong, we would love to be like any other new 18-year-olds but we aren't. It seems like I've only just fully forgiven Jamie for running back into the school for Mum and I know he hasn't been coping with it like he probably should be. We've had this party to try and be normal, even though things are far from normal."

And things were always going to be that way now. Part of the new start that they had was because things weren't going to just be her, her mum and brother. She now had her dad, signally the start of the new normal.

"Philip, why don't you talk to Bolton and Paul? They are going to be in your year when you finally start Waterloo Road." Amelia said.

"I don't think they are going to like me," Philip said.

"Look, Bolton has a great deal of respect for Mum. Just say that you are her nephew or our cousin."

Philip didn't look too happy with that idea but seemed to accept that he couldn't stay with her all night.

"They are going to eat him alive. You've just sent him to the wolves." Maxine said.

"Nah. Jamie wouldn't let anything happen to him," Amelia said. "Plus they've changed."

"I do think you have a little too much faith in people," Chlo said.

"There is nothing wrong with a little optimism, is there?"

They all didn't seem to believe her but Janeece said about them standing in the kitchen for a little too long and that they should probably go and dance for a bit. Amelia followed, having some alcopop pushed into her hand by Maxine, being told that it is basically lemonade so she won't get too drunk and she had to, at least, have one drink.

Rachel had been building herself up to what she needed to say. She had shooed Eddie out of the kitchen, telling him that she would make dinner to thank him for everything that he had done, with him trying to argue that he had looked after James and Amelia because it was his duty to.

There wasn't a lot in the fridge for Rachel to think up something but she did come up with something, glaring at Eddie every time he came into the kitchen for something.

She knew how she wanted to do it. She wanted to chat to Eddie about the little things before they settled on the sofa and spoke about everything that she wanted to talk about. She was obviously reminded about how well that went last time but she knew that last time, they had only just been reunited and that they wanted to relight the spark that happened between them on their magical night together when they were younger. They knew the spark was there now. It was more her just believing what Eddie was telling her again.

Dinner went fine and she could tell that Eddie was more amused about how much she focused on work than angry about it. Others had been. Others had just seen her as a workaholic who only stopped working when something involved one of her children (usually James). But she was sure that Eddie saw more of why she was the way she was because she had given him a short explanation of her life.

So she knew that she could say her list of things that she wanted to say and she was sure that Eddie would sit there and listen to her and probably take what she said on board before reassuring her that he was there for her and that they could take things at her pace.

If only she got to say what she wanted to say.

With them settled on the sofa, with a drink in their hands, Rachel opened her mouth to start to open up to him when the doorbell rang. They both looked at each other, wondering who it could be. Rachel suspected that it might be Philip after he'd had enough at James and Amelia's party (with Rachel knowing that the twins only invited their cousin so that he did feel included).

Eddie got the door and she prepared for her nephew, with her telling him that he might as well take James' room.

"Eddie. How nice to see you again? Is she here?"

Rachel swallowed a groan at her sister's voice. James might never have been completely for their relationship but he had never really stopped them from talking. Melissa would.

"I thought the twins put you up." Rachel said as Melissa walked into the room.

"They did," Melissa said, dropping into the seat that Eddie had vacated. "And it was lovely of them to do so but I just thought, why should I be on my own when I could be with you?"

Because our amazing, intelligent twins are trying to stop me from pushing away their dad and they know that you aren't going to help. Rachel thought.

Rachel should have taken the swirl of jealousy that went through her as Melissa turned to Eddie and put a hand on his arm as a good sign that she wanted Eddie with everything that he was willing to give her.

"Eddie, be a dear and get another glass for that bottle of wine," Melissa said.

There had only been a few times that Rachel told Melissa what she thought of her and this was one of the times where she almost told Melissa where to get a glass to get one for herself, while telling Eddie not to do it. Instead, she allowed it to happen, glaring at her sister in hope that she got how wrong what she had just done was.

"I tell you what, why haven't all your deputies looked like him? He is gorgeous." Melissa said as she turned to Rachel, none the wiser to what she had just done.

Rachel knew that she should definitely have taken the jealousy and ran with it, telling Melissa to leave as the twins were probably not going to get the money back from the hotel that they booked for her or to tell her that Eddie was the twins' father and kissing him in front of her.

But she managed to swallow what she was feeling and reminded herself that the only claim she really had to Eddie was that he was the twins' father. They weren't technically dating or anything like that. The most that they were was the biological parents to the twins. Maybe Rachel should have been thinking about strengthening her relationship with Eddie but instead, she was thinking why would Eddie choose her when he could be with anyone else in the world. And maybe that was a more sobering thought that she wanted it to be.

James couldn't believe it when he looked at his phone to see that he had three missed calls from his mum all within seconds of each other. He pushed his way upstairs as the phone rang yet again and he answered the call pressing the phone to his ear and a finger to his other ear so that he could hear his mum.

"Hi, Mum."

"Your plan backfired."

"What?"

"Your plan with Melissa backfired. She is here. She has gatecrashed our night."

"For fucks sake."

"You are telling me."

"I bet she bloody checked in as well so that we don't get our money back."

"I know. Sorry, darling."

"What are you apologising for? We should have known she would do that."

"James, I just don't know what to do."

"What you need to do is to talk to Dad properly. That is all you need to do. Look, I promise, I will plan a night where it is just you two. I promise that Melissa won't ruin another night."

"James, you can try a little too hard sometimes."

"Mum, that is a 'cross my heart' promise. A pinky promise. I think you forget sometimes that we know you. We… know you are on the fence. We know that you aren't really listening because you are listening to your own thoughts more."

"And maybe some things aren't meant to be?"

James might have continued the argument but he noticed Bolton coming towards him with Ben Lucas struggling to get out of Bolton's grip. He said a quick goodbye to his mum before he stopped Bolton.

"What's gone on?" James asked.

"You need to see Amelia," Bolton said before he carried on his journey.

James didn't care if Ben was being thrown out because James still hadn't forgiven him for his comments about his mum and sister. But to know that Amelia was somehow involved, made James want to follow Bolton and sort Ben out himself (maybe with another punch). But he did as Bolton told him and managed to find (a very upset) Amelia with Chlo. Amelia almost threw herself at him when he knelt down in front of her.

"I'm sorry," Amelia said.

"What you got to be sorry about?" James said.

Amelia didn't reply and James managed to pull back to hold her head in his hands and take a look at her to make sure she was okay.

"He was saying these things," Amelia said between her taking gulps of air. "About you and Mum and if I was like Mum."

"Amelia."

"H-he boxed me in. I called out for you but he put his hand over my mouth. He-e-e dragged me in here. B-Bolton saw. Followed us in and dragged him out. Jamie…"

"I'm here now," James said, pulling her back into another hug.

It seemed like him and Ben Lucas were going to go for round two but James knew that he had one thing that he needed to do and that was to convince Amelia that their parents needed to know what had happened, even if she wanted to tell them that nothing happened.